# An International Competition: How Are Hundreds of Application Videos Screened?

642 young pianists sent in recordings. In the end, only 171 were invited to Warsaw.

Those were the application figures for the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in 2025. According to the [Fryderyk Chopin Institute, the competition's organizer](https://www.chopincompetition.pl/en/newsroom/here-are-the-84-names-of-the-participants-of-the-19th-chopin-competition?id=34&type=news), applications reached a record high: 171 pianists qualified for the Preliminary Round on the strength of their recordings, and ultimately 84 took the stage in the first round of the main competition.

Hundreds of recordings had to be watched, one by one. What made a recording stand out enough to be selected?

The [Chopin Competition's rules](https://storage.nifc.pl/web_files/_plik/file_manager/files/292623_Rules_of_the_Competition_2.02.24_last_pdf.pdf) offer quite a few clues.

## A Recording Must First Meet Four Rules

Before the judges even get to the music, the recording itself has to meet strict requirements. The rules spell them out in detail:

**One camera, filming horizontally.** The pianist's hands must be visible while playing, along with a full-body view from the right side.

**One continuous take, with no cuts.** The entire program must be performed from beginning to end without editing and submitted as a single file.

**No volume adjustments.** The sound cannot be turned up or down in post-production after recording.

**One location, one session.** All the pieces must be recorded in the same place, in one continuous session.

In everyday terms, you have to play all the way through in front of the camera, just as you would on stage. A stumble, a moment of panic, a shaking hand: the camera captures it all. There is no chance to redo just one passage.

![Colored-pencil illustration: a girl plays an upright piano at home in the evening. A phone on a tripod shows a red recording light, filming her hands and full body from the side. An unbroken ribbon of musical notes runs through the room, suggesting a complete performance in one take.](https://static.lianmuse.com/image/blog/a61d4f38f06775c12b85d932ea985cac0dc7023066090ed8a43ed0cc1ee89e8c.jpg)

## The Repertoire Hints at What the Judges Want to Hear

Then there is the question of what to play. The required video program brings together four elements:

A group of six preludes, two études, a slow piece such as a nocturne, and a ballade.

Taken together, these choices suggest several things the judges may want to hear in a single recording. The études reveal technical command. A nocturne shows whether the pianist can make a slow melody sing. A ballade tests whether they can sustain a large-scale work. Playing a group of preludes consecutively reveals how steady they remain from beginning to end.

That is our interpretation of the repertoire, rather than a detailed scoring rubric stated in the rules. A Qualifying Committee reviews the recordings; the rules specify only that, in principle, 160 candidates will be selected for the Preliminary Round.

There is another detail: pianists who have won qualifying prizes at certain competitions named in the rules may bypass video screening and enter the Preliminary Round directly, or even proceed straight to the main competition. Achievements earned on stage serve as another kind of audition recording.

## For Young Piano Students: Play Through Once

The Chopin Competition may still be a distant prospect for a child. Making an audition recording may be much closer. Many piano competitions in China and elsewhere also require a video for their initial screening.

The rules often follow the same pattern: one continuous take, with no cuts.

Yet practice at home rarely works that way. A child plays a couple of phrases, makes a mistake, stops, and starts again. Halfway through a piece, someone calls them to dinner. Many young students can play every section correctly but seldom play the entire piece without stopping.

Only when the phone is set up to record for the first time does the problem become clear: they know every section, but putting it all together makes them nervous.

That ability needs to be developed during everyday practice.

In the China version of Wonder Piano described here in October 2026, Challenge Mode is designed for exactly this kind of practice. Children play an entire piece from beginning to end on a real piano at home, without the app interrupting them. Only after finishing do they review the overall results: pitch accuracy, rhythm, tempo, and completeness. They can also play back the performance they have just finished.

For example, a child could finish each day's practice with one run-through in Challenge Mode. Over time, this can help them get used to continuing after a mistake. When the day comes to record a competition video, the aim is for their thought on pressing Record to be “play all the way through,” rather than “don't make a single mistake.”

**The recording the judges watch is built from all those evenings when a child practices keeping going.**

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Wonder Piano provides AI-assisted piano practice at home. Here, we write about practice methods and the difficulties families encounter when putting them into use.